Your editor has long held the belief that we are on the threshold of creating a Grand Unified Airplane, a craft that would draw all its energy from solar cells, the flexing of its wings, the air passing over its form, and the very act of flight itself. It seems to become less of a science fiction ideal and more of real-world possibility every day. Carbon fiber could be part of that possibility. What if your airplane were its own battery? Think of the weight savings and potential endurance and range. Your editor became fascinated with 2010 research done by Dr. Emile Greenhalgh of Imperial University in London, who developed a structural sandwich with carbon fiber outer layers and a fiberglass core. It could be used for body panels on a car, inspiring Volvo to become involved and proceed with initial tests. Since those early tests, other researchers have duplicated and expanded the research, with Dr. Leif Asp of Chalmers …
Load-Bearing Supercapacitors
What if your battery served also as a wing or a fuselage? Several current efforts converge on creating batteries or supercapacitors that could function as structural elements in electric vehicles. We’ve reported on this before, with efforts by Dr. Emil Greenhalgh at Imperial College London and associated work by Volvo to make car components from the type of energy storing sandwich structure he developed. Your editor’s article on the “Grand Unified Airplane” in the July 2013 issue of Kitplanes magazine advanced the idea that such structures, coupled with graphene’s projected capabilities to collect solar energy, could lead to a self-powering aircraft. (In researching the current entry, he found that his idea had been done at model scale by BAE.) Reports from two universities show that others are working toward making that dream less than an idle fantasy. Researchers at Vanderbilt University are making headway toward creating a “Multifunctional Load-Bearing Solid-State Supercapacitor,” as titled in the American Chemical Society’s journal, Nano …
Solar Impulse 2 Ready to Take on the World
Even while the first Solar Impulse was scaling the Alps, traversing the Moroccan desert, and crossing America, skilled craftsmen and women were designing and building Solar Impulse 2, a larger, heavier solar-powered airplane rolled out this week. Its next challenge, that of flying around the world, will test the limits of even this seasoned team. As shown on the first Solar Impulse’s flights, “Flying the Solar Impulse aircraft is quite different from being at the commands of any other airplane. Flight tactics, piloting skills, aerodynamics had to be re-learned from scratch.” Part of the difference comes from the aircraft’s huge size and light weight. Solar Impulse shares this: “Here’s a fun fact for you to understand how special this aircraft is: the wingspan of Si2 is bigger than that of a Boeing 747, but the former’s weight is just slightly more than 1% of the latter (remember: the weight of a car)!” This jumbo-jet sized craft has all the performance of …